WASHINGTON (AP) - It wasn't too long ago that Barack Obama and his advisers were tripping over one another to tear down Hillary Rodham Clinton's foreign policy credentials. She was dismissed as a commander in chief wanna-be who did little more than sip tea and make small talk with foreign leaders during her days as first lady.

"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

That was in March, when Clinton was Obama's sole remaining rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Now, Clinton is on track to become Obama's secretary of state.

And, unsurprisingly, the sniping at her foreign policy credentials is a thing of the past.

Obama adviser William Daley over the weekend said Clinton would be "a tremendous addition to this administration. Tremendous."

Senior adviser David Axelrod called Clinton a "demonstrably able, tough, brilliant person."

Last spring, though, Clinton was targeted with a steady stream of criticism via conference call, e-mail and campaign-trail digs from the Obama camp, all aimed at shredding her self-portrait as an experienced and confident leader on the international stage. Some of those doing the sniping will be taking up key positions - most likely along with Clinton - in the new Obama administration.

Greg Craig, selected to serve as White House counsel in the Obama administration, delivered a withering attack during the primaries on Clinton's claims that she could rightfully share in the credit for some of the foreign policy successes of her husband's presidency.

"She did not sit in on any National Security Council meetings when she was first lady," Craig insisted in one conference call. He went on to knock down Clinton's claims to influence in the Northern Ireland peace process, opening borders for refugees during the war in Kosovo, and making a dangerous visit to Bosnia.

"There is no reason to believe ... that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton administration," Craig wrote in a campaign memo.

Susan Rice, an Obama adviser who could land a spot in the new administration, mocked the idea that Clinton could lay claim to foreign policy credentials by marriage.

"There is no crisis to be dealt with or managed when you are first lady," Rice sniffed last March. "You don't get that kind of experience by being married to a commander in chief."

Clinton was only too happy to make light of Obama's own foreign policy credentials, suggesting his biggest selling point was a 2002 speech against going to war with Iraq. "Many people gave speeches against the war then," she said in a February debate.

Robert Gelbard, an adviser to the Obama campaign on foreign policy who worked in the Clinton administration, said in March that Clinton had more involvement in foreign policy than a lot of first ladies, but added that "her role was limited and I've been surprised at the claims that she had a much greater role."

Well, never mind about all of that now.

"That was then; this is now," said David Gergen, who has served as an adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents. "Campaigns are ever thus."

"Generally speaking," Gergen said, "there is a recognition that campaigns bring a certain amount of hyperbole, and when it's over you try to find the most talented people you can find to work with you."

Clinton may not have been at the table when her husband made the big decisions, Gergen said, but "she's been imbibing questions on foreign policy and decision-making since 1992."

A spokesperson for the Obama transition team declined to comment on the shift in tone.

It also should be said that some of the wounds to Clinton's foreign policy credentials during the primaries were self-inflicted, most famously her inflated account of the drama associated with a visit she made to Bosnia.

"I remember landing under sniper fire," she recounted in a speech. "There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Soon enough, video footage surfaced of Clinton's unremarkable airport arrival ceremony, where she was welcomed by dignitaries and posed for photos with children.

Clinton brought up the Bosnia trip to counter Obama's suggestion that her experiences as first lady amounted to having tea at an ambassador's house.

"I don't remember anyone offering me tea," she said of the Bosnia visit.

Clinton, in an April debate, blamed her Bosnia gaffe on campaign fatigue. But she did not back away from her claim to broad foreign policy experience as first lady.

"I was not as accurate as I have been in the past," she said. "But I know, too, that being able to rely on my experience of having gone to Bosnia, gone to more than 80 countries, having represented the United States in so many different settings, gives me a tremendous advantage going into this campaign."

Well, maybe not in the campaign, as it turned out.

But maybe, just perhaps, as secretary of state.

By NANCY BENAC, The Associated Press, November 29, 2008

How much will this cost the Obama administration?

One rule of employee relations? Never hire someone you can't afford to fire. Barack Obama's offer to let Hillary Clinton be secretary of state has already been marked down as a brilliant co-option of his former rival. But nothing comes for free, and the question is just how big a price Mr. Obama will pay in the end.

For now, he is getting only praise for his surprise pick. The move fits neatly into the media narrative that Mr. Obama is drafting a team that will challenge his thinking. It's also being described as a gesture that could heal party wounds and mollify Clinton supporters Mr. Obama never won to his side.

The actual motivation? Short term, Mr. Obama understands his real struggles are going to be in the Senate, where he will need 60 votes. Left there with nothing but a potential future run against Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton would be tempted to use her position to highlight her differences with the sitting president. Even as a junior senator, she could gum up his works. Mr. Obama does not need that.

The job at State all but eliminates this threat. As the nation's top diplomat, Mrs. Clinton will be barred, both by law and by custom, from partisan politics. She'll have to dismantle her extensive political operation, and end the patronage that has earned her continued loyalty.

There's arguably also not enough time for Mrs. Clinton to make her mark as secretary of state, and find a reason to break with her boss, and piece back together her empire, and get into a presidential race. They both know that in taking this cabinet post, Mrs. Clinton is clearing herself from Mr. Obama's political path.

Having lived with, up close, the Clinton political threat, Mr. Obama might be forgiven for agreeing to just about anything to forestall a repeat. But no one should forget that this is Mrs. Clinton we are talking about -- with all her ambitions, all her frustrations, all her family relations and all her past. The price of neutralizing Mrs. Clinton as an outside rival, by bringing her inside, could make today's bailouts look cheap.

The early media pronouncement is that Mr. Obama is getting, for this post of top diplomat, a woman with great "experience." Oh, how short memories are. Mrs. Clinton staked her early primary claim on foreign policy. So determined was she to out-tough Mr. Obama that she walked into wild exaggerations -- Bosnian sniper fire and Northern Ireland peace, to name a few.

Egged on by former Clintonite Gregory Craig (Mr. Obama's newly picked White House general counsel), the media reported on just how little "experience" she'd had as the former first lady. Mrs. Clinton worked hard on foreign policy in the Senate, but it still remains far from clear how talented she'll prove at this job. Mr. Obama is taking a flyer on one of his bigger promises -- that of changing American foreign policy.

His onetime rival will also have plenty of leeway to go rogue. The State Department is traditionally hard to rein in, and Mrs. Clinton has insisted she also be free of traditional constraints. She's demanded the right to staff her department with her own people. And while national security advisers are often more powerful than secretaries of state, she wants the ability to circumvent that position and go directly to Mr. Obama.

This is the stuff ugly internal disputes are made of.

As for the issues, there are plenty on which the rivals disagreed in the primaries, from how tough to be on Iran to how strongly to stand with Israel. And let's not forget any differences between Mr. Obama and Bill Clinton -- since no matter how many promises to the contrary, he will be co-secretary of state.

Speaking of Bill, Mr. Obama famously noted during the primary that it was time to move beyond the Clinton era. Instead, he's dragging that baggage back into the White House living room. The Obama team is combing through the hundreds of thousands of donors to Mr. Clinton's foundation. Those papers surely contain compromising conflicts. There was good reason the Clintons have always refused to make that information public.

Mr. Obama can now sit on those documents, renege on his pledges to be one of the most "transparent" presidencies in history, and endure the rightful outrage that will follow. Or he can release them, and guarantee a feeding frenzy. Either option will prove an unpleasant side story to his more pressing policy concerns. And that's just the immediate issue. There are also the 1990s Clinton documents, which remain under wraps at the Clinton library, but not forever.

Having made the grand gesture, Mr. Obama can now only get rid of Mrs. Clinton at risk of another party rift. The president-elect now owns Mrs. Clinton's past, and future, behavior. That could turn out to be some deal.

By Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal, NOVEMBER 28, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - Among the many challenges Michelle Obama will face as first lady, the biggest may be defining the job.

And therein lies the problem: Her newest high-profile job isn't a job, per se.

The Founding Fathers made no provision for the first lady in the Constitution, and no formal or official description exists. The first lady is neither elected nor appointed, but comes along with the president, for better or worse.

Nor is she paid for all that's required of her.

Many a first lady has said, in retrospect, that she had no idea how hard being first lady would be. Even the current one, Laura Bush, according to author and first lady historian Betty Caroli.

Of all the first ladies, she should have known what was in store: Her mother-in-law, Barbara, was first lady from 1989-1993.

"So no matter I suppose how well prepared ... she's probably going to be surprised by the enormity of the publicity, the focus, the demands and so forth," Caroli said of Michelle Obama.

The first lady gets an office in the White House, typically the East Wing - though Hillary Rodham Clinton caused a stir when she famously planted herself in the West Wing among the heavy-hitting honchos of her husband's administration.

There's also a staff to help plan and execute the many social functions held every year at the country's most famous residence, and to help her promote her chosen causes.

Still, the job description is ill-defined, said Robert P. Watson, who has written two books about first ladies and directs the American studies program at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.

"The first lady has to find her own way and match that with her husband's interests," Watson said.

So like most people in a loosely defined job, first ladies have made of it what they've made of it, from the traditionalists like Mamie Eisenhower and Bess Truman, to the politically active like Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton.

First ladies have a certain freedom, then, but only to a point: For all the talk of the Obamas changing Washington, Michelle Obama, cannot, for instance, say "no" to presiding over the annual Easter Egg Roll, which dates to 1878.

Laura Bush once said she didn't see herself as a certain type of first lady.

"I view my role as first lady as Laura Bush," she told the Dallas Morning News in November 2001, near the end of her husband's first year in office. "I really do think that Americans want the first lady to do whatever it is she wants to do."

And Laura Bush did.

She started slow, with a traditional focus on reading and education, befitting a former teacher and school librarian. But she broadened her interests and became more politically active as the years passed. She has traveled alone through the Middle East, Europe and Africa, has championed the rights of Afghan women and has been a frequent, public critic of Myanmar's military government.

Michelle Obama has said her first priority is to help her two young daughters make the adjustment to a new way of life. But many suspect a high-achiever like Michelle Obama won't sit idle for long.

"The primary focus for the first year will be making sure that the kids make it through the transition. But there are many issues that I care deeply about," she told "60 Minutes," singling out military families, work-family balance, education and the Washington community. "So there's plenty to do."

And to be criticized for.

There's the other rub for first ladies: All have met with criticism at one point or another, usually for something they did, said or wore.

Michelle Obama has endured her share already. She still hasn't lived down the moment when she seemed to suggest that she had not as an adult been proud of her country until she saw the public's reaction to her husband's candidacy, said Quinetta Roberson, a Villanova University business professor.

"People will be watching to see that patriotism," said Roberson, who co-wrote a law journal article on the challenges awaiting Michelle Obama.

She'll be under the microscope for other things, too, with everyone watching, for example, her clothes, how she styles her hair, how she decorates the White House for Christmas and how much money she spends on this or that.

It's all part of the delicate balancing act for first ladies, who must tiptoe between being traditional and activist at the same time.

Said Watson: "You can't go out too far one way or the other."

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, The Associated Press, November 28, 2008

It has been leaked that Barack Obama will soon nominate Hillary Clinton - who just months ago berated his policy of opening talks with Iran as "irresponsible and, frankly, naive" - to serve as his secretary of state. When American presidents bring arch-rivals into their service, the fallout can be fateful. The US arguably owes its possession of Alaska to Abraham Lincoln’s choice of William Seward as secretary of state, and its Medicare and Medicaid entitlements to John F. Kennedy's choice of Lyndon Johnson as vice-president. Ronald Reagan offers the closest parallel to Mr Obama's expected move. After his insurgency won the primary in 1980, Reagan reached out to the very political establishment he had trounced and discredited. The consequences of his vice-presidential choice - George H. W. Bush, who had ridiculed Reagan's domestic policy as "voodoo economics" - reverberate even today.

Many bloggers, noting the heavy representation of Clinton administration veterans among Mr Obama's nominees, complain that he has abandoned his message of change. This is foolish. Bill Clinton is the only other Democrat to have been elected president since the 1970s. Any non-geriatric Democrat with executive-branch experience will be a veteran of his administration. "Understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost," Mr Obama said this week in Chicago. "It comes from me." Right on. The prospect of Mrs Clinton's ascent pleases 66 per cent of Americans, according to an ABC poll. The nomination makes Mr Obama look strong, not weak.

The problem is that Bill and Hillary Clinton are strong, too. The power they accumulated during Mr Clinton's presidency has not dissipated and it has been personalised in a way that may be inappropriate for a country's top diplomat. The Clintons, like the Bushes, captured their party's financing apparatus and put it in the service of their family's advancement. That is a shame, but it is not a diplomatic disqualification.

Mr Clinton's post-presidential activities are a trickier matter. He earned more than $10m from speeches last year, some of it from foreign governments. He directs a global charity with 800 employees, making him, in the words of The Washington Post, "something akin to the world's philanthropist in chief". Words like "philanthropist" and "charity" do not do justice to the power thus accumulated. Mr Clinton reaps huge rewards from setting up alternative systems of governance. It is not inevitable that these interests converge with those of the US state department. In becoming a diplomat, or the spouse of a diplomat, a 21st-century charity mogul faces as much potential for conflict of interest as a 19th-century rubber or mining or railroad baron. Mr Clinton has given the Obama campaign a list of 200,000 donors to his presidential library and foundation. Many members of the Bush administration, including the president and vice-president, owe part of their fortunes to business interests linked to foreign governments. But that was not supposed to be the Obama administration's standard.

There is no question that Mrs Clinton has sufficient celebrity to command the attention of the world's leaders. She is "a global brand," as The New York Times puts it. But the question of whether she has any real diplomatic experience at all is still as contentious as it was in the primaries. Greg Craig, the former Clinton State Department official and incoming White House counsel, described her travel on behalf of her husband as "largely ceremonial." A more generous interpretation is that she used "soft power" in matters ranging from international abortion rights to micro-credit. Perhaps she was foolish to pass these initiatives off as grand diplomacy, but they are not nothing.

Soft power, however, is never as soft as it looks. There tends to be hard power somewhere in the vicinity. Why did India embrace cricket in the 19th century? Why did Germany embrace jazz and Japan baseball in the 20th? It is in the hinge between soft and hard power that Mrs Clinton's problem lies. Her diplomatic philosophy is not terribly coherent. Mrs Clinton tried to explain her vote in favour of the Iraq war by saying that she had expected President George W. Bush to exhaust all diplomatic options, and to use the authorisation of force to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq. (But if Mrs Clinton would not talk to Iran under any circumstances, on what grounds would she have negotiated with Iraq?) "I believe in coercive diplomacy," she said. "You try to figure out how to move bad actors in a direction that you'd prefer in order to avoid more dire consequences."

There is no coercive diplomacy without coercion. You cannot bluff on every hand. Threats of force lost their power in 1999 when Mr Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, tried to harangue Serbia into evacuating Kosovo. Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president, called America's bluff, forcing a European war that Nato came within a whisker of losing. When September 11 happened two years later, the bank of credible threats was overdrawn. A threat of war meant a war.

That is the real worry about Mrs Clinton's nomination. Her conception of US power is outdated. Hard or soft, it rests on a willingness to interfere in the internal workings of sovereign countries. That requires force, and it is doubtful whether the tools of force she plans to use are still effective. Peremptory US moral leadership was consensus policy the last time Democrats held power. Mr Bush campaigned against that policy in the name of a "humbler" one in 2000, but embraced it with a vengeance after September 11. Neither the world nor the country appears to be clamouring for a repeat.

By Christopher Caldwell, The Financial Times, November 28 2008

If Hillary Clinton is confirmed as Barack Obama's choice as secretary of state Democrats and independents who backed the former first lady in the primaries will doubtless applaud loudly. Women's groups will raise a cheer. Bill, will be happy, too. But nobody will be more pleased than the Republicans.

For the United States's defeated right, still licking their wounds after this month's electoral drubbing, such a choice would be a gift. In their jaundiced view it would be a first encouraging indication that the president elect, who has sometimes seemed to walk on water, is capable of making unforced errors.

The choice of Hillary Clinton would give the Republicans a familiar target -- at which they would aim when Senate confirmation hearings began. Her husband's potentially conflicting business and speech-making activities would also be in their sights. The resulting uproar might quickly become a distraction for Obama just as he tries to seize the political agenda.

Although she brings undoubted qualities to the public stage Clinton also carries tremendous political baggage. Obama believes in inclusiveness -- hence his expected appointment of Republicans to his Cabinet. But including Clinton means including all the leftover business of her and her husband's controversial Washington reign.

As senator for New York, Clinton has proven conventionally unadventurous on the key foreign policy issues for which she may become responsible. Her conservative outlook could become another cause of friction with a putative boss dedicated to change.

Clinton backed the war in Iraq; Obama opposed it. During the campaign she derided Obama's stated willingness to talk to hostile governments such as Iran. Over the years she has become a lopsided supporter of Israel in its ongoing confrontation with the Palestinians.

If Obama takes Tony Blair's advice and makes Middle East peacemaking the top foreign priority of his new administration, it is uncertain that she would bring to the table anything different. What is certain is that some of the parties to any revamped peace process would question her impartiality.

Clinton's appointment to such a high-profile role could also cause problems within the White House and the Democratic Party. Obama's more liberal advisers will worry that she may start to build a rival power base as the shine comes off the president. Her supposed aim would be to position herself for another presidential bid.

And then there is the question of the vice-president. As long-serving chairperson of the Senate foreign relations committee, Joe Biden can and does claim far deeper and wider foreign policy expertise. When Obama tapped him for the vice-presidency Biden made clear that he was not going to take a back seat.

According to Tony Blinken, an Obama adviser quoted by Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker, Biden told Obama that he didn't want the job "to be the ceremonial, go-to-funerals-and-weddings thing". He wanted influence and access and would expect to be involved in all big policy decision, especially on foreign policy issues.

Given Obama's limited experience of foreign affairs and his busy domestic agenda some Washington observers suggest Biden could become the White House point man on foreign policy, with more clout than either the secretary of state or the national security adviser.

All the same, the recurring motif of Clinton's career has been her power to bounce back and surprise detractors. None of the other possible candidates for secretary of state can match her high-profile reputation. None, arguably, has her political strengths. And none has her ability, sometimes less than admirable, to adjust her beliefs to changed circumstances.




By SIMON TISDALL, Mail & Guardian, November 26 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The State Department will be in good hands if former first lady Hillary Clinton is named as the country's top diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday.

Rice said at a press conference that president-elect Barack Obama had not yet officially named his choice for diplomat-in-chief.

But in an apparent reference to Senator Clinton, she said: "I've heard some names of some great people, and I think that the department and the country will be in good hands."

According to Obama aides, Clinton's nomination is on track and expected to be officially announced after Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday.

AFP, November 26, 2008

WASHINGTON - It may not be your typical Washington power struggle, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's expected nomination to be secretary of state has already locked two turf-conscious federal agencies in a delicate behind-the-scenes dance over how to protect her.

Even before her appointment is announced, informal discussions have begun on resolving a conflict between the Secret Service and the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service, both of which will be assigned to guard her if and when she becomes the nation's top diplomat.

Officials familiar with the matter say the talks revolve around which agency will protect her at home and abroad and who will have the ultimate say in planning her security.

As a former first lady, Clinton is entitled to lifetime protection from the Secret Service. But as secretary of state that task normally would fall to the lesser-known Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the State Department's in-house law enforcement wing.

Neither agency is eager to give up the high-profile job, which will be further complicated by the fact that Clinton's spouse, who might accompany her on overseas missions, is a former president who is also protected by the Secret Service, the officials said.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines declined to comment, saying the senator's office will not discuss speculation about her possible nomination or her security arrangements.

Spokesmen for the Secret Service and Diplomatic Security, which routinely refuse to discuss the details of their protective responsibilities, would not comment publicly on the matter.

But other officials at the two agencies acknowledged that Clinton's nomination would create an unprecedented logistical and jurisdictional hurdles that will require significant negotiation to resolve. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.

The officials said Diplomatic Security is concerned about losing its role as bodyguard to the secretary. The Secret Service, meanwhile, is loathe to abandon Clinton, who under legislation passed in 1997 will be the last former first lady to get lifetime protection, they said.

Left unclear is who will decide because such a situation has never arisen before. In the end, it may be up to Clinton herself but the Homeland Security Department, of which the Secret Service is part, may play an advisory role, the officials said.

Clinton can renounce her Secret Service detail, and a compromise might involve a sharing of duty, with Diplomatic Security providing her with protection while she is at work in Washington or on the road but not while she is at home with her husband, the officials said. But such a solution would not address the possibility of Bill Clinton traveling with his wife, especially if he doesn't give up his Secret Service protection.

Diplomatic Security is far less well-known than its Secret Service cousin, even though it has been around since 1916 and, with agents in 157 countries, is the most widely represented U.S. security and law enforcement organization around the world.

It jealously guards its role as security provider to the secretary of state and Cabinet-level foreign officials who visit the United States. "DS protects more dignitaries than any other U.S. government agency," its Web site boasts.

But it is the Secret Service, founded in 1865, that most people are more familiar with. It protects current and past presidents and their families, as well as visiting heads of foreign states or governments in the United States.

Clinton would be the first former first lady to hold a Cabinet position in the government, although Eleanor Roosevelt served as a delegate to the U.N. General Assembly from 1945 to 1953 and served as the first chair of the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Officials at the Secret Service and Diplomatic Security could not say what her security arrangements were at the time.

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press, November 26, 2008